Preventable disasters, safety in the field, and plant of the week
The power failures in Texas and a reckoning with sexual assault in birding
The power grid failures in Texas have been on my mind. Once in Missouri, we had a 5-day outage under freezing temps. We’d managed to grab the last generator at the store. Even with the space heaters we could run off the generator, we walked around in our coats and visited our grandparents’ place during the day because it was still so cold in most of the house. (Ironically, we had to use a lot of the power budget on the fridge, I recall. The TV drew little power.) But what if my dad had gotten to the store a little bit later? Or if we couldn’t afford a generator, or didn’t have a safe place in the yard to run it? Or didn’t have relatives with power?
Each of those questions translates to thousands of people left at risk. Now in Texas, mutual aid groups, neighbors and nonprofits are trying to fill in the gaps left by the state’s unprepared infrastructure. Here is a list of local groups to support if you’re able.
The longer-term story is how Texas elected officials have created a deregulated, privatized, cost-cutting power grid, and how we can build a political movement to prepare our communities for extreme weather and the changing climate. Texas politicians declined to winterize the power grid by installing insulation, leading to a system that was bound to fail under the kind of storms that experts warned about as early as 2011, when another winter storm caused outages. The governor swiftly laid the blame on renewable energy failures, but those account for a small percentage of energy capacity—the main issue has been with coal, gas, and nuclear plants. By design, as a matter of political dogma, Texas runs on fossil fuels.
Why am I talking about this in a newsletter about local nature? Because I want to emphasize the point that many others have made more eloquently—that weather is not ultimately to blame here, policy decisions are. We all live in places on a continuum of risk, and it’s worth fighting for preparedness now. As the inimitable Kendra Pierre-Louis wrote at the time of Hurricane Harvey, another notable Texas disaster that policymakers had been warned about years before:
Most of what we call natural disasters (tornadoes, droughts, hurricanes) are indeed natural, though human contributions may increase their likelihood or intensity. But they aren't disasters—they're hazards. If a hurricane slams into land where no one lives, it isn't a disaster; it's weather. A disaster is when a natural hazard meets a human population. And often, that intersection is far from natural. …
Harvey was an intense weather phenomenon, yes. But only a lack of infrastructure and planning transformed it into a disaster.
Safety in the field
[content warning: sexual assault]
A prominent birder, Jason Ward, was recently accused of rape. Aisha White says Ward met her as a field trip leader and then began pursuing a relationship with her. He has since been fired from or barred from participating in many different organizations. White has shown tremendous bravery in bringing her story to light — here’s her blog post and a fundraiser for her legal fees.
Removing people known to abuse their power from positions of authority is an important step towards making field biology and birding safe for everyone. Later in the week, two other men who helped lead birding organizations were removed from their positions after credible allegations of misconduct.
But because so much happens off the radar, changing field experiences in ways that reduce risk and prevent abuse from happening has to be our longer-term goal. This week, two PhD students from Cornell, Amelia-Juliette Demery and Monique Pipkin, led a seminar and panel discussion on #SaferScience, discussing best practices for field experiences. They coauthored a recent paper on the subject.
The points the moderators and panelists raised are relevant to anyone who leads field trips or participates in outdoor survey work, even as a volunteer. Importantly, they differentiated between the responsibilities that supervisors and supervisees have in the field, as well as highlighting ways that institutions can create safer environments.
The event is worth watching in full (should be posted on this page later this week), but here are some points that stood out to me:
Even if physical harm doesn’t happen, there are downstream impacts of experiencing risk in the field: decreased productivity, retention in STEM, wondering if you belong.
Discuss field safety and risk with all team members. You can use their paper as a starting point for the discussion. Agree on what to do in the event of an incident beforehand. Institutions should at a minimum provide field safety training; harassment training; wilderness first aid training; diversity, equity and inclusion training; and mentorship.
Engaging in field work with another person or ideally several people can help mitigate risk. Carrying credentials and wearing identifying clothing such as vests with university/lab logos can help deescalate encounters with suspicious landowners or police.
Always try to self-educate on team members’ identities and the risks they face. Don’t ask people to relive past trauma for your educational benefit.
At the same time, there are aspects of identity that are not obvious/that you shouldn’t just assume you know. Talk to team members about what is important to them about their identity, but begin by sharing vulnerable aspects of your own identity to make it a two-way discussion.
Ecology has, in the past, relied on volunteers for data collection. But volunteers are at risk of being taken advantage of because they have little pull in the institution and are often dependent on the experience for career advancement. Pay your workers and provide them with the resources they need.
Report every time you feel unsafe and debrief on near misses. This can help avoid situations that build and worsen over time.
Plant of the week: Northern bayberry
A shrub with white berries—there’s a plant of the week for deep winter if ever there was one. Northern bayberry (Morella pensylvanica) evolved to tolerate sea spray and poor soils. It’s mostly found along the northeastern coast in pine barrens and dunes, though I found this particular shrub on top of one of the Blue Hills overlooking Quincy. When snow covers food on the ground and birds need to find energy sources to keep their metabolism kicking in the cold, bayberries are one reliable menu item in my area.
Bayberry’s tough leaves sometimes stay green long into the winter. The shrub plays a key role in stabilizing sand dunes, which are always at risk of being trampled to oblivion on popular beaches.
Told you it wouldn’t just be pictures of tree bark all winter. There are plenty of weird berries out there, too.
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Possum Notes is a weekly newsletter about wildlife and landscapes around where I live. It’s produced on occupied Massachusett and Wampanoag land.